Poem Strand At Lough Beg Essays - Seamus Heaney, Stations, Heaney

Poem: Strand At Lough Beg Christopher Cameron Nov. 2001 ~ Lambert Poetry Paper The Strand at Lough Beg The Part of this poem that is to be looked at first is imagery in the title of the poem. Seamus Heaney starts us off by giving us this picture of the Strand at Lough Beg, which is the shore of a lake. Already the reader is given the starting point of this story; the Kind of person that Colum McCartney is. Seamus Heamey begins the poem with an image of isolation, confusion, and the loss of safety. Heaney describes what happen the night that his cousin was killed: Leaving the white glow of the filling stations And a few lonely street lamps among the fields You climbed the hills towards Newtownhamilton Past the Fews Forest. Out beneath the stars- (lines 1-4) The first few lines describe how his cousin started out in the glow of the gas station where he was, and him driving off to an open area in a town with the stars above him. The light here represented safety. Colum has started off in a situation where he was very close to this light: where there was, most likely, a store and other people. After he is done at the gas station he then drives away. Heaney gives us the image of the lampposts passing by as he drove. This shows how the light was now outside of where he was but it was still with him. Finally he drives up to Netownhamilton, passing some forests on the way and place where the only light that he is exposed to is the stars that are shining down at him from the sky. This now represents how the imminent safety that he had at the public gas station was now gone and he was isolated, in these hills only lit by stars. The safety in the light is now, far way: leaving him exposed to anything outside. The image of the first few lines is o f Colum now isolated, surrounded by silence, and open to the dangers they may be lurking. The succeeding lines are expressed through historical imagery. Along that road, a high, bare pilgrims track Where Sweeney fled before the bloodied heads. Goat beards and dogs eyes in a demon pack Blazing out of the ground snapping and squealing. (Lines 5-8) In these few lines we are given this image of his cousin now driving down an isolated road. Heaney then bestows us with the gruesome image of these bloodied heads and animals: referring to the story of Sweeney. This new character that Heaney intimated us to, Sweeney, is an Irish king (around 1000AD) who was titled as a madman for savagely killing a saint. The incentive behind the use of Sweeney was to give the reader the idea that this road is dangerous of that something bad is going to happen. Even though the image of Goat beards and dogs eyes in a demon pack / Blazing out of the ground snapping and Squealing is quite appalling and startling, Heaney adds this in order to give the reader a feeling of the unreal, world and that what is happening, really shouldnt be. Blazing out of the ground snapping and squealing represents how he thought the killers had approached his cousin: in a surprise and unexpected mode. There is a sense of his whole world being intruded upon. It is now, in the middle of the first stanza, which we know that Seamus Heaney, himself, is not sure of what really happened that night. This is evident by the way he questions what he says is happening. What blazed ahead of you? A faked roadblock? The red lamp swung, the sudden brakes and stalling Engine, voices, heads hooded and the cold nosed gun? Or in your driving mirror tailing headlights That pulled out suddenly and flagged you down Where you werent known and far from what you knew. The lowland clays and waters of Lough Beg. Church Islands spire its soft treeline of yew [Lines 9-16] Here he uses present imagery to describe what happened, and to make it seem more possible. Again, I think, he uses analogies to light to represent the level of safety around his cousin while this was going on. In line ten, he applies